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PIERS Proceedings, Marrakesh, MOROCCO, March 2023, 2011

Comparison of Dierent Filter Types for Grid Connected Inverter

Jiri Lettl, Jan Bauer, and Libor Linhart Department of Electric Drives and Traction, Faculty of Electrical Engineering Czech Technical University in Prague, Technicka 2, 166 27 Prague 6, Czech Republic

Abstract The acquisition of the electrical energy from renewable sources is very trendy in
these days. That is also why the applications for renewable energy generation undergo rapid development. As the greatest weakness of renewable sources can be assumed the instability and dependence of energy amount, that they deliver. In order to stabilize the energy output and to give it some dened shape and value, the power converter must be connected to the output of the solar panel. For this purpose of application is the most suitable choice voltage source inverter (VSI). In order to suppress or reduce negative eects the lter is connected between the converter and the network. The lter must be designed precisely, because it must have sucient attenuation at the inverters switching frequency and it must not bring oscillations to the whole system. This paper deals with design and simulation of such a lter type. Simulation models of the systems inverter-lter were made. 1. INTRODUCTION

The amount of the energy from renewable energy sources, as solar energy or wind turbine energy, that is delivered to supply network, signicantly rises. That is why the grid friendly interface between the supply grid and the energy source is needed. The quality of generated energy is crucial, because non-sinusoidal currents delivered to the grid can cause additional non-sinusoidal voltage drop across the line impedances and therefore increase of the voltage distortions delivered to the load. Next problem is that the energy supplied by these sources does not have constant value, but uctuates according to the surrounding conditions (intensity of sun rays, water ow, etc.). These sources are supplemented by additional converters as voltage source inverters (VSI). This converter is then controlled by a modern sophisticated control algorithm such as PWM which ensures nearly sinusoidal current generation. This solution is illustrated in Fig. 1. The power from some renewable energy source is delivered to the DC-link and the output of the inverter is ltered in order to obtain low current distortion.
2. FILTER TOPOLOGIES

The output lter reduces the harmonics in generated current caused by semiconductor switching. There are several types of lters. The simplest variant is lter inductor connected to the inverters output. But also combinations with capacitors like LC or LCL can be used. These possible topologies are shown in Fig. 2.
D I S T R I B U T I O N

S O L A R A R R A Y

DC link

Inverter Li

L-C-L filter Lg Rsd ICf UCf Cf

C1 UDC

S1 S4

S3 S2

Io

N E T W O R K

Controller

Figure 1: Block diagram of the VSI.

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Marrakesh, Morocco, Mar. 2023, 2011 1427

VSI

VSI

VSI

(a)

(b)

(c)

Figure 2: Basic lter topologies. 2.1. L-lter

The L-lter (Fig. 2(a)) is the rst order lter with attenuation 20 dB/decade over the whole frequency range. Therefore the application of this lter type is suitable for converters with high switching frequency, where the attenuation is sucient. On the other side inductance greatly decreases dynamics of the whole system converter-lter. Transfer function of the L-lter is depicted in Fig. 3 as a black dashed line.
2.2. LC-lter

The LC-lter is depicted in Fig. 2(b). It is second order lter and it has better damping behaviours than L-lter. This simple conguration is easy to design and it works mostly without problems. The second order lter provides 12 dB per octave of attenuation after the cut-o frequency f0 , it has no gain before f0 , but it presents a peaking at the resonant frequency f0 . Transfer function of the LC-lter is 1 F (s) = (1) 1 + s LF + s2 LF CF It is depicted in Fig. 3 by red colour. In order to suppress the negative behaviours near cut-o frequency the damping circuit is added to the lter. The damping can be either series or parallel. The damping circuit selection inuences the transfer function of the lter (Eq. (2) resp. Eq. (3)). The inuence is depicted in Fig. 3. 1 + s RP D CP D 1 + s RP D CP D + s2 LF (CF + CP D ) + s3 LF CF RP D CP D RSD + s (LF + LSD ) F (s) = RSD + s (LF + LSD ) + s2 LF CF RSD + s3 LF CF LSD F (s) = (2) (3)

The own design of the lter is a compromise between the value of the capacity and inductance. The high capacity has positive eects on the voltage quality. On the other hand higher inductance value is required to achieve demanded cut-o frequency of the lter. Connecting system with this kind of lter to the supply grid, the resonant frequency of the lter becomes dependent on the grid impedance and therefore this lter is not suitable, too.
2.3. LCL-lter

The attenuation of the LCL-lter is 60 dB/decade for frequencies above resonant frequency, therefore lower switching frequency for the converter can be used. It also provides better decoupling between the lter and the grid impedance and lower current ripple across the grid inductor. Therefore LCL-lter ts to our application. Transfer function of the LCL-lter is depicted in Fig. 3. The LCL lter has good current ripple attenuation even with small inductance values. However it can bring also resonances and unstable states into the system. Therefore the lter must be designed precisely according to the parameters of the specic converter. In the technical literature we can nd many articles on the design of the LCL lters [4, 5]. Important parameter of the lter is its cut-o frequency. The cut-o frequency of the lter must be minimally one half of the switching frequency of the converter, because the lter must have enough attenuation in the range of the converters switching frequency. The cut-o frequency must have a sucient distance from the grid frequency, too. The cut-o frequency of the LCL lter can be calculated as fres = 1 2 Li + Lg Li Lg Cf (4)

The LCL lter will be vulnerable to oscillations too and it will magnify frequencies around its cut-o frequency. Therefore the lter is added with damping. The simplest way is to add

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PIERS Proceedings, Marrakesh, MOROCCO, March 2023, 2011

Figure 3: Filter transfer functions.

iI +

1 sCf R

+ +

ug 1 sLg ig

Figure 4: Filter model in operator area.

Figure 5: Eects of the damping circuit.

damping resistor. In general there are four possible places where the resistor can be placed series/parallel to the inverter side inductor or series/parallel to lter capacitor. The variant with resistor connected in series with the lter capacitor has been chosen. The value of the damping resistor can be calculated as 1 Rsd = (5) 3res Cf Transfer function of the lter with damping resistor is depicted in Fig. 3 by cyan colour. The peak near resonant frequency has nearly vanished. This is simple and reliable solution, but it increases the heat losses in the system and it greatly decreases the eciency of the lter. This problem can be solved by active damping. The lter can be modelled as shown in Fig. 4. The eect of the damping resistor is clear from Fig. 4. The resistor reduces the voltage across the capacitor by a voltage proportional to the current that ows through it. This can be also done in the control loop. The current through Cf is measured and dierentiated by the term s C f Rsd . A real resistor is not used and the calculated value is subtracted from the demanded current. In this way the lter is actively damped with a virtual resistor without losses. The disadvantage of this method is that an additional current sensor is required and the dierentiator may bring noise problems because it amplies high frequency signals.
3. FILTER DESIGN AND SIMULATION RESULTS

For this lter were taken these limitations into account: 1) the cut-o frequency of the lter must be minimally 10 times greater then grid frequency and simultaneously maximally one half of the converter switching frequency 2) The decrease of the power factor caused by the lter capacitance should be lower than 5%

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, Marrakesh, Morocco, Mar. 2023, 2011 1429 Table 1: Parameters for calculating the lter components. Grid Voltage (V) Output Power of the Inverter (kVA) DC link Voltage (V) Grid Frequency (Hz) Switching Frequency (Hz) 230 1.5 400 50 3000 Inverter Side Inductance Li (mH) Grid Side Inductance Lg (mH) Filter Capcitor Cf (F) Damping resistor R () Cut-o Frequency (Hz) 17.7 5.7 3.45 11.3 1300

Figure 6: Output of the inverter with lter.

The parameters of the designed lter as well as parameters required for the lter design are summarized in Table 1. The simulation results of the inverter with the designed lter with active damping connected to its output are in Fig. 6. Fig. 5 shows the eect of the damping resistor and active damping with the virtual resistor.
4. CONCLUSIONS

The output current lter has been designed and simulated. The obtained results seem to be promising. However, we will be able to evaluate the functionality of the lter after the whole system is realized and the lter will be connected to the output of the inverter.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Technical University in Prague, grant No. SGS 10 800630. The research described in the paper was supervised by Prof. J. Lettl, Csc.
REFERENCES

1. Hinz, H., P. Mutschler, and M. Calais, Control of a single phase three level voltage source inverter for grid connected photovoltaic systems, PCIM, 1997. 2. Liserre, M., F. Blaabjerg, and S. Hansen, Design and control of an LCL-lter based threephase active rectier, Industry Applications Conference, 2001, Thirty-Sixth IAS Annual Meeting, Conference Record of the 2001 IEEE, Vol. 1, 2001. 3. Arajo, S. V., A. Engler, and B. Sahan, LCL lter design for grid-connected NPC inverters u in oshore wind turbines, The 7th International Conference on Power Electronics, Daegu, Korea, 2007. 4. Dahono, P. A., A method to damp oscillations on the input LC lter of current-type ac-dc pwm converters by using a virtual resistor, Telecommunications Energy Conference INTELEC03, 2003. 5. Raou, M. and M. T. Lamchich, Average current mode control of a voltage source inverter connected to the grid: Application to dierent lter cells, Journal of Electrical Engineering, 2004.